


Five migraines and one minor headache

by SrebrnaFH



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Developing Relationship, Headache triggers, Headaches, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Low-key JohnLock, M/M, Massages, Nausea, Nausea triggers, Nice Sally, Pain, Pain remedies, Smells, Tactile trigger, Undefined time period - sometimes during S2, light - Freeform, oversensitivity, sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-29 20:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17815271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: Everyone suffers from a bigger or smaller headache, from time to time. That applies also to our favourites from Baker Street and their friends...





	1. Sherlock

The day had been going perfectly ordinarily, even with a slight trend towards boring. He had done some work on his blog, checked several slides under the microscope in order to identify the microorganisms that were living on the dead man's suitcase (an unexpected amount of varied fungi) and watched a nature documentary on honey badgers (very clever animals).

John was at work, Mrs Hudson was out visiting a friend in the hospital and the house was quiet. Even the clientele of Speedy's was surprisingly quiet.

Later, when he had time and his faculties back again, he decided it had all been his fault (not that he would ever acknowledge such aloud). It all happened because he had decided to _borrow_ one of John's new pencils.

It was a punishment from some power that apparently guarded doctors from their overly nosy detective flatmates.

John's new pencils turned out to be round, which in itself wasn't that bad (although if pressed to have an opinion, Sherlock preferred triangle-shaped writing implements, as they conformed better to his fingers), but it posed a problem when one put them on an angled surface (like, say, slightly worn-out coffee table). They rolled. Off. And down to the floor. And under the couch.

Sherlock, despite all his professed sociopathy, apathy and general misanthropy, really liked John and really didn't wish to infuriate the only flatmate who had lasted for more than a week (the ones at the Uni didn't count), so he quickly dived in search of the escaping pencil and...

And now he way paying for it with a mind-searing, blinding headache.

Maybe it was a power that actually told him to care less about stupid flatmates, their stupid ideas of privacy, their stupid, stupid, triple stupid pencils?

He used to have headaches. Scratch that, he knew he was prone to them, but for years of self-medicating and drug use he had ignored, managed to avoid or otherwise anaesthetised himself against them. Ever since he got clean, he had been lucky not to encounter the particular set of circumstances that set them off, but right now, right there...

Low sugar, check.

Less than adequate sleep (according to John), check.

Long time in upright position without much movement, check.

Quick and sudden change of position - first up and then bowed, head low, check.

Him ignoring the slowly raising wave of pain and tension and not taking his ibuprofen, check.

And now his sinuses were threatening to burst out of his skull, his eyes felt as if someone was practising needlepoint on them, his skin reported every possible touch as painful and he could smell _everything_.

 _Absolutely everything_. There was the leather cleaner John had used recently on their couch, vanilla and coconut, the most hateful combination in the entire world, apparently beloved by owners of leather clothing and upholstery. A prime kind of nausea trigger, if he ever saw one.

There was a slight, slow, thin scent of baking coming from flat A and while in general he had nothing against Mrs Hudson's cakes (quite to the contrary), now his stomach twirled at the thought of a shortbread pie crust and he felt that any moment his tea would be making a comeback.

His stomach rolled as he tried moving away from the coconut-infused sofa, but he had to, he simply had to, or he would be adding to the room's olfactory suite... Don't think about it, don't even think about it...

His skin felt as if someone had shrunk it over his bones and his lips felt papery and thin and breakable as he swallowed air in order to subdue his rebelling insides and avoid breathing through his nose and his squeezed shut eyelids still let in some of the pinkish sunlight from the windows and he felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, because this was absurd, this was torture, this was hot and cold and sharp and raspy at the same time and every whisper felt like a nail file boring into his temples.

There were sounds far and close, all intermingling, unexplainable, each a burst of sudden fire somewhere to the back of his skull, each terrifyingly unstoppable.

Wood on wood, metal on stone, stone on wood, leather on the carpet, human skin on human skin.

_Oh._

Wood on wood, rustling, cotton on cotton, linen on cotton...?

Hands on clothes.

Popping of a button.

Tea leaves and disinfectant and lanolin.

Softness of a palm.

Rumbling of a voice.

Words unrecognisable, but he nodded. He might have whimpered, but no judge on earth would get him to confess that.

"Shite."

Hands on his neck, blessedly warm, spreading relief into his middle and down, down to the tense core and up, up to the control centre of the brain, where little mad dwarves had apparently set up a smithy and were now hammering at a piece of metal that seemed to be connected to his eyes, his spine, his stomach and his chilly fingers.

Water. A cool round pill that seemed to grow into the size and spikiness of a hedgehog as he tried to swallow it.

Scratchiness of an unshaved cheek against his shoulder.

Milk and chicken broth and rye bread.

Was it possible for someone to smell like a painkiller?

Tea. Milk and sugar, the way he hated it, but it slid down his throat, just a few swallows, and despite everything, it seemed like a magical elixir as it soothed and unknotted and filled.

"Caffeine, will help the ibuprofen a bit," John said softly. "Now, up you get, and into your bed. You need to nap. No, this amount of tea wont keep you awake, and you're too tired anyway."

A push to his shoulderblade. A pull up to his feet. An arm around his back.

Shuffled steps towards his bedroom.

Ah.

Cotton on cotton.

John made his bed with new sheets. New, smooth and cool sheets.

Too cool.

He shivered as he sat down and allowed himself to be manipulated, but in a flash, there was a new weight about his shoulders and he was pushed down to his pillows.

"My heating pad," John did something and blessed warmth surrounded Sherlock slowly. "But I will kill you if you experiment on it, and I know policemen in the Yard that will help me hide the body."

"John..."

There was something. Something he had lost. Something he needed to tell John.

"Sleep."

He would find the pencil in the morning.


	2. Greg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg has had a tough day. Or two. Or more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The description of the case is lifted from the book of Joanna Chmielewska, so I can't claim any credit for this one (apart from translation and adjustment to the situation), but it fits so incredibly well in this one that I just couldn't not use it.  
> Also, angora rabbits and crocodiles are from another book of the same author.

Greg had been up and trying to work for three days, with barely any sleep. And these were only three last sucky days of equally hard three weeks. Together with Donovan they were trying to make sense of a particularly ugly case, one that dragged on as if it was stuck in mud, hopeless, laborious, terminally boring and filled with an incomprehensible number of drunks. The idea of alcohol abuse on the side of the victims, of the perpetrators and of the witnesses was nothing new for the police officers, this however was a bit too much.

Crimes are committed by people, the witness statements are given by people and all these people, like one, each and every last one of them, were completely rat-arsed. The case files were flowing with alcohol and Greg was heartily fed up with that, having spent several weeks trawling in an ocean of alcoholic gibberish, which didn't spare him any kind of torture. He was spared nothing - neither the white mice, nor the bats and not even the big, black boar, obstinately starring in the main witness's testimony.

He was heartily fed up with the boar, too.

He looked up at Sally, who was making notes from the file held in front of her.

"I am almost certain," she said slowly, "That these people, once sober, are raving even more than they do when sloshed."

"I'm starting to suspect that even the officers who interrogated them were hammered. 'The witness did not see the content of the receipt because there was a pink bird perched on it', why the fuck were they even taking this idiotic shit down?"

"There was a canary, in that flat," Donovan remarked absently and Greg glanced at her with a grimace.

"Seriously?" he groused, massaging his temples. "I am getting hangover just by reading this crap, but without the pleasure of getting properly plastered beforehand."

"Did you take anything?"

"Uh?"

He blinked up at Sally... Oups. Now he was seeing her twice.

Still without the benefit of alcohol, just pure and simple exhaustion-driven migraine.

Ah, now he finally noticed the way his temples had been pounding for... who knows how long.

"That's it," she stood up and liberated the file he was trying to read. "Nothing good will come from you giving yourself brain damage by staying awake too long. Come on. I'll drive you... No, I will ask the desk sergeant to find us someone to drive us both to your place, I will make sure you get inside and you will finally take a night's sleep. You can work with Holmes, but you can't pull the kind of shit that he does!"

"OK, OK," he moaned, rubbing his eyes. "Just stop yelling at me."

"I will keep yelling as long as you keep being an idiot," she mumbled and strode away, looking for someone to organise a car and a driver for them.

Greg made a valiant attempt at perusing one of the statements - miraculously free of the black boar, yet abundant in angora rabbits _and_ crocodiles - but the letters swam in front of his eyes and he had to squeeze them shut in order to avoid triggering a response from his vagus nerve and thus an upchucking of his lunch.

"Just put this thing away and nobody will get hurt," Sally appeared in his office door like an angel sent to make him see the error of his ways and put him on the right path.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming," he heaved himself up and straightened, which wasn't exactly the smallest challenge. "Coming."


	3. Molly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly has an odorous visitor. Well, he isn't there voluntarily...

She was a grownup with a good control of her reactions and she worked in a profession where a weak stomach would eliminate anyone in the very first months. She was a grownup with a good... contro...

Molly swallowed and looked away from the corpse now on her table.

It was her job, it was her job, and she was the only one qualified...

She caught herself on the table behind her, trying to control her breathing.

The smell was the worst part, actually.

She was used to various stenches of human decay, but this was... New. Relatively new, as in, she hadn't had cases like that before, but it was definitely oldschool.

Someone had stuffed the deceased in a packing container full of naphthalene balls. That meant that not only she had to determine what kind of effect on human body would long-term exposure to naphthalene have but all the vapours made it hard to determine _anything_ about the time of death except for "at least a year", considering how condensed the compound was in the victim's body and the clothes. There were no signs of insect activity - obviously - and a number of dead mice and other rodents found in the vicinity pointed to the body being there since at least the previous harvest season.

And Molly felt that if she would not be able to get rid of the smelly carcass soon, she would be joining said rodents because the stench was almost more than she could stand. Her eyes were watering and she was feeling more and more woozy as she propped herself on another table, trying to take a breath.

"The vent," someone reached around her and she barely stifled the scream of surprise. "And out with you, now."

There were two pairs of hands pushing her out of her own office, to the corridor, up and onto the small side balcony, barely big enough to fit three.

"It was rather... stupid."

She closed her eyes and leaned on the railing, gulping the cold London air greedily.

"The naphthalene there could have done you some serious damage," Sherlock remarked testily. "You should have opened the vent immediately."

"Sherlock... Now, tell us," Doctor Watson patted her back cautiously. "What happened? Why was this guy reeking of mothballs?"

She shook her head.

"Someone put him in a box full of this stuff. Found during the night by a patrol. I wasn't there when he was delivered," she coughed. "I just came in with the papers and their preliminary findings from the site and he was already there..."

"Laid out and emitting. Probably for several hours, judging by the stench. Can we track the culprit down and make them understand that this was..." Doctor Watson seemed honestly annoyed. "Irresponsible? They should have opened the vent when they brought him in."

"Well, we can guarantee a speedy resolution to  _this_ problem," Sherlock pocketed his phone and smiled crookedly at his friend. "Come along, John. Let's go and make someone see the error of their ways."

"You stay here and get some air. It will take a while for the lab to become actually usable again."

She nodded slowly and slid down to sit on the cold stone of the balcony, feeling the heaviness in her head slowly dissipating.

At least she could say "doctor's orders" if someone asked her why she was avoiding going back to her own office.


	4. Sally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sally is hob-nobbing with police creme de la creme.  
> Or whatever it is that floats on top of stuff.

A day.

Just one day.

One shitty little day spent in the company of the Superintendent.

Sally wanted nothing more than to chop off her head and die. She didn't really see any other way of dealing with how she felt.

There were many different things she could stand without flinching. Loud music. Flashing lights. Stench of decay. Freak's prattling. People being idiots. People being idiots while thinking they were smart.

She could even smile through an entire afternoon of manly jokes and sausagefest quality remarks about "females in the force" and "little women not risking their precious hairdos".

What she couldn't stand was the New Car Smell (TM). And the Super had just changed his car. And wanted to show it off. And to kill two birds with one stone, he decided to show off his new favourite officer of the week, namely, Sally.

And that meant Sally had to sit in the car, be nice and friendly (but not overly so), smile a lot, say she is honoured to be so marked out and in general behave like a good girl who may catch criminals but is also a worthy representative of the younger generation of police officers and appreciates the elevated company she was keeping.

Sally hated them all, to the very last sleazy senior stick-in-the-mud.

And she hated the new car smell.

She hated the smell of leather, too. Unfortunately, the seats of Super's new vehicle were done in creamy, buttery leather and she suffered hour after hour of torture as she could not stand the touch of it on her bare hands. She felt her skin crawling with every accidental contact and she could barely breathe as during acceleration her neck was pushed into the backrest, into the soft, fluffy, sweet-smelling upholstery and she wanted to get out of that car and be able to scrub herself _raw._ She wasn't sure if she wouldn't have to shave her hair off - would have been a pity - but she couldn't really hope to simply wash the stink of _largess_ and _money_ from her curls with her normal shampoo.

Her cheeks felt strained from the unfamiliar grimace (they said it was a nice smile, but still it didn't feel even a bit natural), her eyes stung and felt sandy and her head was swimming with the sticky-plasticky-smokey-gasoline-y odour of PVC and latex and glue.

She wondered if throwing up in Super's new car would mean demotion or suspension.

"Very well, Sally, my girl," the Super smiled at her, small eyes lost in the rolls of skin and she swallowed her revulsion and subdued the need to scratch these eyes out of that face with her bare hands. "Now, let's get you back home, yes? Arthur? The NSY, please."

"Oh," she scrunched her nose. "I will have to..."

"Well, you do have to pick up your car, won't you?"

She shook her head.

"I use the Tube to get to the station," she managed to explain. "Not enough parking spots by the building."

"Incredible," the Super frowned and looked at her with his lips in a thin line. "Why don't you try arriving earlier?"

"We have place reservation, sir, I can't just use anyone's spot."

"Well..." he shook his head. "I can't understand it. But, well, women probably don't feel very well driving in the city. That's..." he shrugged and smiled at her condescendingly.

_Don't kill the Superintendent. It's a public place, there are witnesses. Don't kill him, it's not worth it. Don't kill him, Sally._

"Well then, here we are," he said with a wide smile. "Now, off you trot, back to your desk. Do the force proud."

The rictus on her face was firmly rooted in the back of her brain and the stiffness of her knees as she walked back to the nearly-dark building was the only thing that kept her from dropping to the ground and throwing up everything she ate in the last three years. She managed to make it to the lobby and found herself a stiff, plastic chair before her legs finally gave out.

She sat there, shaking a bit, her insides knotted like a nervous teenager's first tie and her nose greedily clearing itself of the cloying stench of all-present plasticisers. Even the slightly burnt smell of their old coffee machine seemed better.

"This may be better," Greg's hand moved into her field of vision. "Freshly ground, Jamaican Blue bean - not sure if it means something to you, but the lady in the shop was positively salivating. I figured you'd be needing this after a day of rubbing elbows with the finest of the force."

"Geez," she made a clumsy grab for the cup and nearly cuddled it to herself. "You don't have to be _that_ sarcastic. I mean, some of them were probably human beings."

"With 'probably' being the most important element. Drink up, it will clear your sinuses and give you some power to get yourself out of this good girl getup. I'm driving you home. Come on."

"But..."

"I have some Advil in the glove compartment."

"You're a saint, boss."

"No, just perceptive. Take your stuff and come. And change these shoes to something you won't kill yourself in, will ya? I know you have a pair of flats under your table."

"Yes, sir."

"Start calling me sir and I'll start calling you 'my dear girl' and none of us would survive that, would we?"

She shivered and allowed more coffee to slide slowly down her throat.

"Ah," she whispered with the first real smile of the day. "Bliss."


	5. John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad day at the surgery.

Out of all seasons of the year John liked summer the best. In summer, people left London and took their petty complaints and silly illnesses with them to bother some doctors in the province, leaving him with interesting, involving cases that actually required something more than paracetamol, a lot of fluids and rest to cure. Unfortunately, he was now deep in the fall portion of the year and that meant flu, colds, scraped knees, sneezing, coughs, accidentally eaten flora and school fights.

It meant dozens and dozens of children, every day without an end in sight (although there was a slight chance they would leave for Christmas again).

Children loved John. John was the cool doctor who run around with Sherlock Holmes and showed up on the telly. John, in general, had nothing against the idea of children - they were needed for the species to survive and some of them had even certain aesthetic and entertainment value. He smiled at them and discussed their boo-boos and nodded in all the right places. He never talked down at them and avoided babytalk like plague.

John was the doctor who told parents in plain language how to manage the rashes, the bald spots and dry elbows of their newborns, what to feed a toddler to get them to poo and why grownup toothpaste is bad for six-years-olds, advised teenagers on acne, handed out menstruation pads and contact to a nice gynaecologist without a blink of an eye and was kind to almost every kind of idiotic adult issue that people brought in.

John was the doctor parents chose when their child was at the most whiny stage.

John was one step away from shooting someone.

Well, more like several thousands of steps, because his gun was at home, but mentally and emotionally he was hanging on a thin thread over a pit of bubbling madness.

Squeaky voices of children and anxious questions of their mothers twisted together into a symphony of pain, accentuated by the beeps of the machinery from all around the surgery, the tapping of someone's high heels and an electronic toy one of the little patients brought with him and amused himself with in the waiting room.

Each peep, beep and chirp was like a knitting needle jabbed into his ears, each sound bringing his shoulders higher and higher in an instinctual attempt to guard his head - his ears and brain and nose - because for some reason there was a direct link between aural signals and the way his back tensed and the pressure in his nose rose.

Another three-year-old with a runny nose and a voice like a high-speed dentist drill was swept out of his office and he had a fraction of a second to relax.

But no more than a fraction, as the nurse apologetically herded in his next patient and he had to somehow align his face with what the general public demanded of their family GPs and ask the same set of questions as he had been reciting since the morning.

His lunch break came too late and was far too short (also, filled with food so bland and nondescript he had trouble recalling what it had actually been) and back to the treadwheel with him.

He had vague hope for some peace at home, but with how Sherlock had been lately, he couldn't really count on his flatmate being kind enough not to practice his violin playing at some torturous hour.

The door opened and he looked up, straining to make his mouth simulate a smile. Apparently it didn't work. Sarah was standing in the door of his office, looking at him with narrowed eyes.

"How long have you been trying to wait out this headache?"

He blinked slowly and shivered, trying to identify the right words to answer her.

"Shit. Tamara!" she shouted down the corridor and John winced. "Doctor Watson will not be available today anymore. You, mister, pick up your things, take this," she handed him a pill he recognised as naproxen, "drink some water and get into a cab. Go home. Don't you even dare take the tube in your state. Now, up, up, up. And eat something actually nutritious, as soon as you can, damn it."

He found himself with a glass and the pill, pushed out of his own office and, once he demonstratively swallowed and chased the painkiller down with a few mouthfuls of water, bundled into a cab with an order not to show up until he became functional again.

The cab ride was not that painful, since he managed to ask the driver to turn down the radio, but once he got out and stood in front of their door, the sounds of traffic all around him were as good as deafening.

He slowly unlocked the door and crept inside, trying to avoid jarring his pounding head and almost rock-hard locked muscles. He could only expect the torture to last longer, should he turn his head or nod, so the way upstairs was cautious and laborious, each step carefully thought out in order to avoid sudden moves.

The living room was surprisingly quiet, so he divested himself of his shoes and jacket and slowly sank into his armchair, trying to find a position in which his overworked muscles would finally relax.

He was watching the dust motes on the carpet, hands over his head in a vain attempt at stretching his poor abused muscles, to no avail. There was no way he would be able to get this section functional again without a hot bath, and the bathroom was so, so far away...

He sighed and tried rolling his head in a vain attempt at loosening at least the neck muscles, but he only hissed in pain as twin lances of pure suffering shot from his shoulder blades, over his head and straight to his frontal sinuses, leaving him stuck in a very uncomfortable position, too afraid to move.

Tears prickled the corners of his eyes as he contemplated his predicament.

A heavy weight settled about his shoulders and neck and Sherlock clicked the controller button as he plugged the pad in.

"Oh," was all the sound John was able to produce right then.

"Well," his friend shrugged, looking away. "Tea?"

"Yes, please," he whispered, trying to find a new position not that the warmth (not yet heat, but soon) from the pad started to seep into the abused muscles.

"A-a-a," suddenly there was a hand behind his neck and another on his chest, pulling and pushing in coordination, lifting him and then settling him down, on the chairs backrest. "Just sit here. Don't move, don't do anything. It will hurt like hell."

"But..."

"Just sit here, John, please. I'll be back in a moment."

He slumped in the new position, the heating pad providing a bit of a support for his head and the temperature doing its work on his neck and shoulders, slowly but inexorably. Blessed heat - now finally proper heat - was spreading down his arms and to his forearms and hands, where all the tiny little muscles, ligaments and tendons had been vibrating like over-tightened guitar strings. Only _now_ he felt how bad it actually had been and sighed at the thought of Sarah, who had seen through his strained smile and the pose and noticed _this_.

_Good old Sarah. A box of chocolates for her then._

A mug of tea was placed in his hand and the long, warm fingers closed about his own, holding it in, letting the hot water do its work on this end, too.

"Honey and a bit of milk," Sherlock murmured from a weird spot, somewhat to his elbow.

"B-but..."

He had been trying to cut down on sweets. Honey was in the cupboard mostly for Sherlock's benefit, he wasn't supposed to...

"Drink it," came an imperious order. "You need sugar and then normal food, but sugar first. I've ordered some Chinese, should be good for you, but some sugar first. And theine. It will help the naproxen, which I suppose Sarah has already forced you to take before you left the surgery."

"Thanks..." he murmured and slowly sipped the milky amber liquid, feeling the warmth filling him from the inside and matching the effect the heating pad was having on him from the outside. "Aaah. That's... good."

"Very well," Sherlock was doing something in the kitchen but John couldn't identify anything specific, just faint sounds of plastic on plastic and the kettle boiling - again?

Something was placed just behind his chair but he had no energy to focus on anything but the blessedly warm mug in his hands. Which was suddenly picked up and placed on the table in front of him.

"Sher...!" he winced against his own surprised exclamation.

"Just... trust me with this. I need you to lean back on the chair and relax."

"But... my tea?"

"I'll give it back in a moment. But I need you..." Sherlock inhaled with a hiss, "I need you to take off your shirt. Or I can take it off for you, if you'd rather."

"But - what?" John tried to look up, check his friend's face, but the muscles, despite being warmed up, were not yet up to that challenge. "Agh. Why?"

"Trust me? I'll make you feel better. I promise."

Sherlock sounded so... sincere.

_Ah, what the hell._

"You," John sighed. "I can't even think about trying to undo my buttons."

His hands _were_ shaking, but also... Why not?

In seconds he was questioning his choice, as long, nimble fingers travelled down his chest, popping the buttons swiftly. His arms were lifted one by one and the cuff buttons undone, each wrist cradled in the soft embrace of Sherlock's large palm as he manipulated the plastic and then tugged the fabric down and off and off, stretching John's tired arms slightly, oh so very carefully, to free him of his white working shirt.

"The vest?" came another soft whisper. "Can you take it off or..."

John relaxed into the unexpected intimacy of the situation - the lowered lights, the warmth of the room, the scent of tea and... lavender?

Clumsily, he pulled the vest from the waist of his jeans, rucking it up his chest slowly and made an attempt at pulling his left arm through the sleeve when Sherlock's fingers took over and stretched the material enough for the whole operation to be finalised easily.

The pad was back on his naked skin now, surrounding him with warmth and softness of the fleece cover and he sighed, relaxing into its electrical embrace.

"I'll be right back."

He could only grunt in response, most of his focus on the way his muscles stretched as he rolled his shoulders slowly. Sherlock made some more soft plastic kind of noises John could not place. There was something being mixed... water poured? Something soft again...

The smell of lavender became much more pronounced.

"Now, tip your head slowly back," Sherlock ordered as he returned and placed another object on the shelf behind the chair. "I will support it, just... yeah, on this towel. Now, keep your eyes closed and... Just keep your eyes closed."

He obediently relaxed into the new position and waited, breathing in the refreshing flowery vapour now slowly permeating the flat.

Two long, large, warm palms sneaked down to rest on his shoulders, pushing the pad aside and pushed against his collarbones slowly and rhythmically for a few breaths. Then the large thumbs swept up, up, into his hair and ooh...

_Ooh._

That was unexpected.

Slick, strong and very precise touch of these deft fingers felt surprisingly, well. Erotic. As the tension slowly dissipated under the circles the pads of these thumbs pressed into John's skin, he felt heat flushing his cheeks, completely unrelated to the fact that he was surrounded by various sources of warmth.

The main source of warmth was, however, blocked by the back of his chair and he barely managed to stop himself from straining against the sturdy piece of furniture in an attempt to get closer to his friend.

"This won't work," Sherlock suddenly removed his hands and John almost keened at the loss, but the taller man made his way around the chair and dropped into a cross-legged position in front of the chair. "Come here," he ordered, reaching up to John and pulling him closer by the belt loops of his jeans.

"What?"

"I know how to do this, but we don't have the right kind of support for your head, so my shoulder will have to do," Sherlock instructed impatiently. "You should... Well... Straddle. My legs."

John blinked heavily and tried to focus on that objection he had against that... that thing he wanted to object against. The tension in his whole back and head was overwhelming however, so he simply nodded and allowed himself to be manhandled into a new position - sitting astride Sherlock's lean thighs, his forehead leaning just below the detective's collarbone, neck cradled by the lithe musician fingers. These same fingers slowly found their way up into his scalp, pressing and pressing and circling and pushing, sending waves and waves of mixed pain and relief down his spine.

His soft huffs of breath, pushed out of him on every return of Sherlock's hands, turned soon to near moans, which he had hard time keeping silent as the touch moved all around his skull, helping the tension to leave the most painful areas.

"True lavender oil," Sherlock informed him in an undertone and John breathed it in deeply - it, and Sherlock, who smelled of some exquisite wood-derived toiletries - pine? spruce? some kind of resin? amber? yes, warm amber...

"Mhm," he managed to answer, as apparently Sherlock was waiting for some kind of reaction. Thankfully, a nonverbal kind apparently satisfied him.

"Unlike other kinds of lavender oil, the proper lavandula angustifolia has a clear, defined scent, very few negative effects and one definite positive one," Sherlock recited as his fingers danced by the corners of John's jaw. "It is an acknowledged migraine relief remedy."

"Ah," seemed to be the needed reaction.

"Massage with lavender oil has the double effect of being a massage - specifically, the tension headache kind - and covering you with enough lavender extract that you will serve as your own headache medicine quite soon."

His fingers were now tracing the lines of John's neck muscles as they joined the groups on his back and slowly yet insistently made their way down John's back, sweeping towards the spine and again away from it. He felt all ten digits digging into the fleshier areas by his shoulder blades and kneading the hell out of the tight-wound muscles there.

This time John's moans were most definitely audible.

"I suppose," Sherlock said slowly, retracting his hands and leaving John feeling rather bereft, "I should remove my shirt, before I manage to drip the oil all over it."

"That would be reasonable," John murmured.

"But..." Sherlock raised his palms, still glistening and very much smelling of lavender, "could you get my buttons? I wouldn't want to, you know, leave too many greasy prints..."

John frowned as his brain processed the request, but his hands were way ahead of him, already undoing the second button by the time his mind came to the correct conclusion that yes, Sherlock Holmes had just asked him, John Watson, to undress beforementioned Sherlock Holmes, while John Watson was sitting astride Sherlock Holmes's legs in a most interesting interpersonal configuration he had experienced in the last decade.

Very quickly, once he had the shirt at Sherlock's wrist, the whole ruse was made obvious, as there was no way they could get these sleeves off Sherlock without touching his hands, which would mar the material of the shirt anyway something awful...

But John couldn't be arsed to care - and apparently neither could Sherlock, who insistently pulled out one hand and then used it to free the other from the restrictive material. Without even slowing down, he brought John closer to himself - much closer than John has expected he would ever be able to find himself. In fact, sitting chest to chest, face to face with Sherlock Holmes, both of them partially covered with oil (there were still a few dry patches in various places on their persons), was one of the most exciting things to ever happen to him when it came to relationships of any kind.

"Sherlock..."

"Just relax, John," the long, sinewy arm reached around him and fingers dug into his lower back, just above his belt line, exactly where some awful, disgusting, annoying line of pure pain was attached.

His back stretched into a silent spasming arc of pain relief.

"Sh-she..."

"Ah, this is connected to your leg, I suppose," Sherlock mercilessly dug deeper, stronger, more insistently into the little point where one part of John's battered neural system was sending so many painful signals in random directions.

"Y-yes," John gasped as the touch bloomed into something akin to torture. "Ah-ah, Sherlock, I..."

And it dissipated. A few more deep rubs along its line and the whole ribbon of suffering seemed to have melted. And so did John. Faceplanting neatly smack into Sherlock Holmes's pectoral.

The hands on his back stilled and he listened for a moment, expecting to hear immediate words of dismissal, but instead what came to his ears was Sherlock's suddenly accelerated breathing.

_Oh._

"You should continue the massage," he suggested, mumbling. "One should never leave a massage half-done."

"That's... an admirable idea, John," Sherlock's voice was huskier than usual and John focused completely on the way it sounded rather than the idea behind the words, so the return of the long, skilled fingers that were now treating his back like dough was a surprise. He allowed yet another sinful moan to escape as Sherlock found another tight knot of muscles and pressed it into submission.

"I suppose we could amend our current situation," Sherlock's warm breath washed over John's cheek. "I think it will work the best if we move this whole enterprise to my bed. We will have much more space to work on some of that..." he paused and John noticed with mortification that Sherlock was looking directly at his very much tented jeans front, "that, ah, muscle tension you seem to have developed so suddenly."

"Massage should work beautifully on that," John was more than willing to agree to anything, if it ensured Sherlock would keep his hands on John's body.

_Uh. What?_

The content of the last few sentences filtered slowly to his relief-addled brain.

"Come along, John," Sherlock pushed him up and away from his promising, friendly warmth. "Come, I'm not done with you, yet. My bedroom, _now_."

The headache as good as gone, so he easily scrambled to his feet and reached down to help Sherlock hoist himself up.

"Bedroom," he agreed and breathed in some more lavender.

Yes, there was definitely something to be said about the advantages of a good, proper massage.


	6. Anthea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anthea never has headaches. NEVER.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here comes the last entry :)  
> Thank you for the ride (short as it was) and I hope you all enjoyed it, despite the painful content and detailed descriptions.

Anthea was a reasonable person, despite all the unpredictability of her chosen profession. She slept for an adequate number of hours, she ate healthily, she exercised, but not in excess, and she did relaxing exercises whenever she could. She had even downloaded some meditation apps to her phone and she followed their helpful directions whenever she was alone - mostly during long car rides.

She used neutral and unscented cosmetics, from plain olive oil soap to nettle shampoo to lanolin hand cream. Nothing that would attract attention, make her stand out or, in case of prolonged stay in enclosed space, would get overwhelming.

Her handbag, tiny as it was, was filled with "just in case" objects for all occasions. Her phone, her powerbank, two cords, a needle and black thread, two safety pins, a miniature handgun and a vial of strong lemon oil. Should she be shut for too long in a place filled with smells not conductive to a human's wellbeing, she unstoppered that and used a few drops to chase away unwanted olfactory input. She considered making a second vial with eucalyptus extract, but that would require significant research and taking into account other aspects, like flammability.

She knew that nothing beat, for sheer indulgence element and in the headache prevention department, the pure lavender oil, but that was exactly why she never used it at work. Lavender was vacation. Lavender was mehendi, lavender was having her body painted brown by an artist and relaxing under careful ministrations of a man who never even knew that there was most probably a sniper tracking his movements all the time he was covering her skin with a pattern of flowers and leaves.

Lavender was the forbidden pleasure of coming back to the office and wearing long sleeves and dark blouses and touching the still-legible marks of flourishes and mock-lace on her forearms until they faded with subsequent baths.

She wouldn't use lavender at the office, no.

But lavender was not needed. She didn't get headaches. Ever.

She drank her second tea of the day during lunch and ate sparingly, leaving half of the meat on her plate. She avoided crowds and smoking areas and public transport. She used her noise-cancelling headphones whenever she could.

All that made her feel safe, comfortable and as relaxed as she could be.

There was only one thing that could potentially - but only in a distant, very much improbable fashion - cause her to reach for the box of Advil she had in her desk.

There was a light blinking on her desk as she raised her eyes from the text messaging app where she had just composed an update to one of their agents. The light meant 'please see me at your earliest convenience' and not 'drop everything and run", so she peacefully finished the text, sent it and went to pick up some more tea from the tea room. She knew exactly what would be needed.

As she entered, the man behind the desk raised his head and looked at her with bloodshot eyes.

Ah. One of _these_ days.

"What had he gone and done today then?" she asked mildly as she took a step back and fetched that specific box from her top drawer.

The great man behind the desk crumpled, his face in his hands, so she slid a pill onto the tabletop in front of him and waited, glass of water in her hand and neutral expression on her face.

"He will get himself killed one day," Mycroft Holmes declared tonelessly. "And now he had gone and found himself..."

Ah. That thing.

"Take the pill, sir," she suggested. "And then I can help you to find something appropriate to commemorate this incredible achievement of socialisation. A milestone in your brother's life, I suppose. And consider - if that's the truth, then we can cede your Sherlock-related headaches onto someone else... and a volunteer, too boot."

The man who wasn't, at all, absolutely, a minor official in an unimportant office, looked up at her with a scowl.

"You've met him," he growled. "Sherlock and Doctor Watson will either be the making of each other or the death of each other. But before any of that will come to be, they will be the death of _me_."

He snatched the pill and washed it down with the dregs of his tea - which only underscored how awful he found the whole situation.

"Well, sir," she shrugged and made a suggestion of an eyeroll. "It's not like they shagged in a public place, is it?"

Mycroft Holmes groaned and hid his face in his hands.

_Ah._

Anthea sighed, poured herself a cuppa and extracted another Advil from the pack. That one was going to be a little headache.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find me on my tumblr - ask or message, if you want to talk](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/)   
>  [My blog on writing](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for making it that far!  
> This is my one of my bigger stories and I'm thankful to everyone who managed to read it. I have a small request to you however - a tiny thing that will help me improve, hopefully.  
> I am taking a writing course and one of the tasks is to ask my readers to describe my writing style in 3 adjectives. I'd be grateful if you could provide this kind of feedback :)  
> (if you provided it already somewhere else - THANK YOU! :))
> 
> Find me on [my tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/).  
> [My writing blog.](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/)  
> [My handmade blog.](https://srebrna.wordpress.com/)
> 
> Regards
> 
> Srebrna F H


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